The Bachelorette Week 9: Becca’s Fantasy Suites

Welcome back, Bachelorette Nation! It’s our namesake week again and things are about to get weird. This week is always the perfect combination of exciting and cringe-y. If we’re being honest, this season has kind of flown by, but I must say in spite of whatever downfalls Becca may have, she’s in Thailand with 3 guys that I could see taking home the final rose. Do we know anything about her other than that she’s from Minnesota and got dumped by Arie? No. I’m hoping her guys found out more than ABC shared but either way, let’s get to the dates and the creepy shots of the morning after.

Blake’s Blessing

Matt: I promise I don’t have beef with this guy, but I can’t believe he’s 28. Maybe it’s the cameras, maybe he truly is smitten by Becca, but the dude acts like a too-enthusiastic teen at a leadership camp. I’m just waiting for him to bust out an “ice breaker” song to sing with Becca.

Ryan: I don’t know, I see a darkness in Blake. He seems like a deeply hurt individual. Maybe that’s because he’s got multiple Tragic Personal Stories (his girlfriend’s friend texting her about breaking up with him, his parents’ divorce, a freaking school shooting), and I’m used to only learning one at a time. Either way, he’s going to cry multiple times before the end of the season, whichever way this goes.

In any case, he ended up with ye olde “no kissing in the ancient temple” date that the producers trot out every time they head to somewhere non-European. It probably puts even more energy into the fantasy suite portion of the date, but I’m less interested in it each time it comes back.

Matt: That’s fair, and maybe some of the over-enthusiasm is to compensate for his “dark passenger”. In spite of my thoughts on Blake, he and Becca do appear to have a connection which is nice to see. What I 100% don’t need to see is Becca’s dress on the floor and Blake wrapped up in the covers. We get it, ABC. Blake got kind of deep with us wondering if this was the last time he’d be with Becca which was a rare moment of self-awareness.

Jason’s Hard Left Turn

Ryan: Jason came on strong the past two or three weeks, and good for him. He seems like a really sweet, normal dude. But he was also too far behind Blake and Garrett to catch up, so as soon as I saw him eating bugs in the market, I knew he was going home. Local Flavor Date = Third Place Finisher.

Matt: Yeah, Jason is a guy who I didn’t have strong feelings about most of the season, but like Becca, he’s grown on me. And since I like him now, I literally had to rewind and see what happened when Becca had her freak out. A second and third viewing confirmed that, nope, he did nothing wrong. He simply was engaging in playful conversation and in that very moment, she decided that he wasn’t for her.

There was some talk of how Jason was “blindsided” just how Becca was with Arie but I’m not sure that’s the right comparison. Arie definitely blindsided Becca but she should be thanking her lucky stars for it. It meant she didn’t have to stay with someone who kind of sucks and gave her the story line needed to be the Bachelorette. As noted above, I dare you to tell me anything interesting about Becca outside of the final 45 mins of Arie’s season.

Ryan: Agreed, you can’t claim to be blindsided if your date has to take a five minute breather every time the conversation touches on your future together as a couple. I think Becca was just surprised as how much she was starting to actually feel for him in the past couple weeks, since the connection with the other two guys was instantaneous (i.e. they’re her type physically).

Garrett and the Treehouse of Horrors

Matt: I have a few thoughts on this an almost none of them have to do with the date which I sort of already forgot. First, being the third date during this week has to be, um, troubling? Also, I’m going to go right ahead and fast forward to the fact that their “fantasy suite” was essentially a tree house. Soak that in, friends. Blake got luxury accommodations and Garrett gets to go “glamping” in a glorified malaria net. Part of me thinks this was payback for Becca’s “fantasy tent” in the desert.

Ryan: Payback how? Becca has had three fantasy suites that we’ve seen, and two of them lacked running water. I don’t see who’s getting payback on whom, just that Becca got a crappy deal.

But I do want to revisit that date. I loved the idea of going down the river on a raft, and the fact that everyone in the entire province was there made it so much better. It’s rare that you can so clearly see that one of the producers screwed up, and even more rare that the screw up made for better television. It might have been the most interesting part of the episode to me. Speaking of clearly seeing the producers’ hand in the show…

Scene of the crime

Jason’s Hail Mary

Ryan: Did you notice that Becca was wearing the same green tank top when she was talking about getting rid of Jason (shown before Garrett’s date) that she was wearing when Jason knocked on her door (shown after Garrett’s date)? So I’m pretty sure this was what should have been the “morning after” Fantasy Suite scene, and it got shuffled around because it was more interesting that way. Neither of them seemed like they wanted to be there, and Becca is 100% throwing away that scrapbook before she leaves for the Rose Ceremony. All kinds of uncomfortable.

Matt: I was yelling at the TV for Jason to turn around and spare his dignity for most of this segment, but I get it. This isn’t entirely without precedent in the series and if I’m a betting man, this is the producers doing anything they can to drum up a story line for the next “Bachelor”. This season had a handful of guys that I liked but sort of lacked a clear “oh, that guy is totally the next Bachelor” contestant. You know, like Peter or Eric or Kenny from Rachel’s season…

Dont do it!

I have some level of confidence that the guy driving the car from Jason’s date to the airport didn’t have the authority to not take Jason to his final destination and ABC is doing whatever they can to manufacture a Bachelor that anybody cares about after a string of duds + a Ben Higgins (who while boring, is nowhere near the clown/retread that Arie, Nick, Chris, and Juan Pablo were). Let’s go into the wayback machine – after 22 seasons, Sean and Catherine are the only “winning” couple to still be together. ABC’s gotta do better.

Ryan: Do we think people will still care that much about Jason after two months of Paradise? Also, is he attractive enough to be the Bachelor? I guess time will tell.

Matt: Definitely not, but who else ya got?

We’ll see you in a week for the season finale! We won’t be actively covering BIP as frankly 4 hours of that show feels like homework but we’ll be around!